A KDE Plasma theme that aims to replicate the look and feel of Windows 7

I actually love the Aero theme of Windows 7. Honestly, I would prefer some sort of derivative of this without Windows/MS logos or trademark, that does not necessarily adhere super-closely to Windows 7, but just does what makes most sense; taking the best parts of Aero and combining with the best aspects of other DEs and themes (including KDE Plasma's Breeze and/or the older Oxygen).

I never got over Windows 2000. That old grey theme was ugly, but an extremely clear and efficient design language. In wanting to keep on with the good and trusted, I would always disable all theming on Windows 7, which gave you basically the same style.

A lot of these copycat themes end up getting like 80% of the way there with an uncanny valley vibe but this is spot on

The &quot;Aero&quot; look of Windows can be categorized into an esthetics era called &quot;Frutiger Aero&quot;. (<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;aesthetics.fandom.com&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Frutiger_Aero" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;aesthetics.fandom.com&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Frutiger_Aero</a>)

Nice. But (unpopular opinion) my favourite is Expose that clones Windows XP&#x27;s Luna.<p>The included analog clock is from Windows 7 though.<p>They say Luna is plasticky and teletubbies land. But it just makes me happy :)<p>What I miss is files tree pane in the file manager. Dolphin has this dir&#x2F;files mixed tree in the right pane, but it&#x27;s just not the same.<p>Still very satisfied with my recent switch to Linux&#x2F;KDE. Almost everything worked out of the box, with very minor annoyances. Refreshing compared with my recent Windows experience.

I was already running KDE&#x2F;Plasma for years by the time Windows 7 came out, so for me Aero&#x27;s emotional associations are negative. It was the user interface of the janky, annoying side of my computer that I would occasionally boot in college in order to play trendy Windows games with my friends, and eventually abandoned because I hated having to deal with it. I can&#x27;t help but be a bit repulsed looking at that UI (or the original Aero theme for Windows).<p>It&#x27;s funny how those associations can color perception in such an immediate way. The &#x27;pure&#x27; aesthetics are harder, if not impossible, to access.

Tangential, but the default breeze theme of KDE plasma desktop is really good. I want to thank everyone who worked on that. That was the first OS theme I looked at and thought ok - system ui is a solved problem for me now. I have completely stopped tinkering with KDE customization options since - the default just looks perfect.<p>It was kind of similar when I first looked at VSCode&#x27;s default color dark theme and realized - I am never changing an editor color theme again - and I haven&#x27;t.<p>Defaults matter - and I am happy to see open source tools like KDE ship with great usability out of the box.

As a KDE4 user, I had been using a UI KDE4 for two years when Windows 7 came out in 2009. I thought Windows 7 felt a lot like KDE4 and maybe was inspiration for MS. Also, KDE4 was a one step back two steps forward release, and so it kind of felt good to see MS intentionally or unintentionally assimilating KDE&#x27;s UI.

2010 will be the year of Linux on the Desktop.

Wow, that is an impressive recreation of Aero.<p>I wonder if the taskbar animations are similar? I remember that on Windows 7, a cool animation was that the shine on the taskbar item would follow your cursor.

My first introduction to computers was a FreeBSD machine my dad kept in the craft room closet—that&#x27;s where I learned how to use bash, Emacs, mutt, and the like. My family had a Mac, and I daily drive a Mac. And while I&#x27;m not the Apple fanboy I used to be, I still like Apple&#x27;s products for the most part.<p>Hot dang this theme looks awesome.<p>As much as I detest Windows and everything non-UNIXy about it, Windows 7 looked great. That&#x27;s the version of Windows that my high school ran; none of the computers were <i>fast</i> by any means (IIRC it took all night to render the weekly video the press team put out on Fridays) so the animations all were a little… stiff… but I appreciated that MS actually made an OS that looked <i>good</i>. I mean, look at that shine! Look at those lighting effects! And the OS is still useable!<p>Anyway… it&#x27;s also a testament that you can <i>make</i> KDE do this kind of trick. Nutso.

Honestly, I find that as long as the DE keeps the &quot;desktop&quot; metaphor, it&#x27;s not too difficult to jump ship. Windows 7 was the last version of Windows I used in anger, and I had no trouble switching to Cinnamon DE. Mate would&#x27;ve worked just fine, too. It&#x27;s GNOME 3 and its ilk that I find frustrating, and keep having to apply tweaks to make it usable for me.<p>The couple of times I tried Plasma, I loved all the customisability of it; it&#x27;s awesome that I can apply one theme and now it feels like Windows 7, or a different theme and now it&#x27;s Unity. But the &quot;default&quot; feel of Plasma just feels overwhelming, and even though I could drill down into fifty levels of settings to get what I want, it still turned me off because what I really wanted was just better defaults...

Aero is cool, and i&#x27;ma let you finish, but Windows 2000 was the best look ever.

Death&#x27;s dynamic shroud? Whoever made this has seriously good taste in music.

Just bring back the Keramic, I&#x27;m not asking for much

I love that this exists and in fact in many ways prefer how it looks to the stock KDE theme, but it’s unfortunate that modification of KDE itself was necessary to achieve this level of accuracy.<p>It underscores a more general frustration of mine of Linux DE theming in that it’s less flexible and capable than Kaleidoscope for classic Mac OS was, as a result of theming being somewhat tacked on even for DEs that pride themselves on flexibility (like KDE). Ideally, there’d be little that themes couldn’t be able to change about one’s desktop environment without invasive modifications.

Great job. Maybe the best effort yet?<p>That said, I liked the windows 8 look and feel better though. Not a huge fan of shiny glass aero effects. Grouping was quite the innovation back then. I wonder what happened to the (woman) who created it.<p>I think Gnome can, easily, be turned into an amazing GUI but its creators, for whatever reason, insist on ruining the out-of-box experience. It&#x27;s 99% there and better than almost anything Windows and macOS have to offer. How come only apple offers cool stuff such as reopen apps after reboot.<p>sorry for the rant

Aero was amazing. Windows XP and Windows 7 were big UI revolutions.<p>Even when Windows 7 was active, there were plenty of projects trying to bring Windows XP and Aero to Linux GUIs.

Absolutely gorgeous. While I&#x27;m more of a Windows 9x guy these days, for a glossy, modern, transparent UI the peak is undoubtedly Windows 7. Just gorgeous. The last time Microsoft fully cared about releasing a finished product with an actual coherent philosophy of design underpinning it.

I&#x27;m sad that Windows doesn&#x27;t look like this anymore. I&#x27;ve never liked KDE, but I might not mind using this. There&#x27;s lots of caveats in that README; enough to make me think that Chicago95 works better.

Impressive. Anyone know where I might find a gnome version of this?

For those who prefer Windows XP: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;store.kde.org&#x2F;p&#x2F;1885548" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;store.kde.org&#x2F;p&#x2F;1885548</a>

Stuck in the past, literally. Not only by the look but by specifically not supporting the modern Linux graphics stack.

Nice job. I wonder if there&#x27;s a way to get the font exactly like Windows 7? It looks a bit different.

As a recent convert to KDE (from GNOME) any good theme recommendations? Breeze is fine but a bit bland.

Nice but if I could replicate KDE into windows I would, or other popular DE, except gnome.

And I though Windows Vista (which is basically same look as win7) was inspired by KDE3.

pixel perfect! great job, really

This looks fantastic. Well done!

Looks amazing! I&#x27;m slapping this on my work laptop right now, no regrets!

Not bad. But what about replicating the KDE 1 classic desktop?

I prefer Windows 11 look and feel - Windows 7 kind reminds me Aqua (that lickable metric) - dated and ugly.